If you started writing the essay and reached a conclusion such as: “Capitalism has not failed, so there is no need to reform society according to a totally new economic system”, a top grade would probably be out of reach. Since how likely is it that the teachers would reward such a fundamental challenge of their premise and take a critical view of themselves? I would find that unlikely.

Nevertheless, that seems to be reality for the students who will be studying a brand new minor at CBS with the delightfully bite-size name: “Minor in transforming business and organizations to build sustainable and democratic economics.”

Here they will be having fun with three subjects, and the first they will get to grips with is: “Re-Imagining capitalism. Towards Just and Sustainable Futures”, which also represents the theoretical and empirical grounding for the newly established minor.

In this subject, you learn to “understand the ongoing multiple crises on the economic, social and environmental level and in order to envision sustainable and just futures, an understanding of the dominant socio-economic system, namely capitalism, is a fundamental and foundational prerequisite”.

The conclusion seems predefined: Capitalism has failed and all the injustice and crises in the world, from “pandemics, rising sea levels, gender inequality, business models based on exploitable labor, economic instability and digital rabbit holes”, as the lecturers put it in an interview about the new minor, cannot be solved until we re-imagine or replace capitalism. And the lecturers are, in fairness, very clear about their intentions: “In order to fundamentally change, we need to critically explore and understand how our current economy functions, and now the students can do that and address those questions at their own university,” as Mathias Hein Jessen says in the interview.

THE CRISES AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES are serious, and of course, we should solve them, but writing off capitalism as a solution in advance, is deeply flippant of a university. The conclusion is clearly framed and, as a minimum, fundamental changes are required, with capitalism being reformed from within, whatever that means, or totally replaced. In effect, capitalism has been written off before the first day studies begin.

You must ask yourself whether there is any room for teachers or students who challenge that mindset? Will other economic systems suffer a similar fate under other predefined predicates, with the result: that minors become an orgy of political consensus devoid of free debate? Because when the only material on the curriculum is criticism of capitalism, can we even talk about this being a serious minor?

The field of study has been restricted, and all other economic mindsets cut away in a one-sided focus on criticising capitalism. Decades of evidence and research have been thrown overboard, and a blind eye is being turned to capitalism as a potential solution for solving global challenges.

Capitalism can no longer be used, despite its worldwide success in recent centuries, when all other economic systems have had to concede defeat. What about the billion people who have been helped out of poverty over the past 30 years? Forgotten. What about all the medicine and all the vaccines developed as a result of private companies? Forgotten. What about the enormously high standard of living and the historical peace on large parts of the planet? Forgotten. All these result from capitalism giving individuals the incentive to produce, invent or do business with each other to improve their own lives. Meanwhile, it has created probably the most positive side-effect ever – that the world has become a better place for just about everyone.

In their eagerness to criticise capitalism and ignore all its positive results, they are also overlooking the huge potential capitalism creates for solving the other crises in the future. It provides great potential for solving the climate crisis without also reducing our standard of living, as we have been doing in Denmark for the past 30 years, during which time we have increased our GNP significantly, and our greenhouse gas emissions have generally traced an opposite trend.

In their eagerness to criticise capitalism and ignore all its positive results, they are also overlooking the huge potential capitalism creates for solving the other crises in the future. It provides great potential for solving the climate crisis without also reducing our standard of living, as we have been doing in Denmark for the past 30 years, during which time we have increased our GNP significantly, and our greenhouse gas emissions have generally traced an opposite trend.

SUDDENLY THE CLASSIC academic virtues, with the university as an investigative institution, built on a critical, scientific approach to the world, have been thrown overboard in favour of a particular world view. Suddenly the answer is predefined. Suddenly, you no longer have to investigate and challenge the world you live in to reach the right answers.

That does not mean that our universities should be banned or discouraged from criticising capitalism. Of course not. All serious universities deal with investigating the world as it is with a critical and scientific approach. But no serious university has such a narrow approach to the world that it includes a predefined political premise as the grounding for a minor, and replaces the empirical and theoretical background with a predefined conclusion.

We must ask ourselves: Is that how we should shape our education system?

And if you are still in doubt, scroll back to the introduction and replace “capitalism” with “democracy” and “economic system” with “social system”, or “capitalism” with “socialism”, for that matter.

For while the premise changes, the task will not, noticeably, and instead you will be studying the minor: “Reimagining Democracy. Towards Just and Sustainable Futures.”

And while sitting an exam you will be tasked with writing an essay titled: Describe why democracy has failed as a social system, and re-imagine whether it can be reformed from within or do we need to implement a totally new social system to make it more just and sustainable?”

Making that simple replacement reveals the new minor’s blinkered view of the world. Because while the questions, technically, are open questions, they lead to closed conclusions. And isn’t that the exact opposite of what our universities are put on this planet to do? To investigate the world with open questions, free of prejudice, critically and scientifically, to subsequently reach often completely unexpected conclusions.